The New Culture Wars Over American History
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2021
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
In September, 2020, the writer Christopher Rufo appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to discuss the threat posed by “critical race theory.” Rufo had come across the term while looking into the origins of the anti-racism movement, and saw its potential as a conservative target. In the months since, critical race theory has been condemned by President Trump, outlawed by several state legislatures, and endlessly debated in town halls and school-board meetings. The uproar, largely manufactured by Rufo and amplified by conservative activists in government and in the media, goes hand in hand with the controversies around the Times’ 1619 Project, and with the resistance to the movement to take down Confederate monuments. Benjamin Wallace-Wells, a New Yorker staff writer, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the furor over critical race theory, and how to understand the current rethinking of the country’s past.
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| 1:11.4 | This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about |
| 1:16.3 | politics. It's Friday, July 2nd. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of The New Yorker. |
| 1:22.9 | It's absolutely astonishing how critical race theory has pervaded every institution in the federal |
| 1:28.7 | government. And what I've discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, |
| 1:33.7 | the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American |
| 1:38.9 | people. I'd like to share three. On September 2nd, 2020, Christopher Rufo appeared on Tucker Carlson tonight and delivered |
| 1:46.8 | a three-minute monologue on the dangers of what he called critical race theory. |
| 1:52.0 | Rufo, now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, had come across |
| 1:57.5 | the term while looking into the origins of the anti-racism movement. |
| 2:02.2 | Though critical race theory was a term introduced by legal scholars in the 1970s, |
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